This article is a literature review on Amazonian food intake to evaluate the quality of the diet. The authors discuss traditional foods, the nutritional characteristics of core and non-core foods, and the implications of diets based on traditional foods. The authors emphasize the importance of collecting more detailed dietary intake data to better understand Amazonians' diet quality.

This article stresses the use of multivariate analysis to study the emergence of states. The authors first discuss how social inequality, population density, and trade affect state development. Next, they turn to a time series regression to formally examine social stratification, urbanization, technological specialization as predictors of political integration. Finally, economic vulnerability and scalar stress are considered as possible underlying factors in the emergence of states.

This paper presents tests of the relationships between tropical African agriculture and cultural variables regulating reproduction in order to examine a theory which suggests that the lagging or absence of tropical Africa's demographic transition is the result of pervasive 'pro-natal' cultural practices. Strength of association between these factors and non-plow agriculture, the traditional method of farming in tropical Africa, leads the authors to suggest that women's larger subsistence role in these societies favors extended family households in which child-rearing responsibilities can be shared, and polygynous marriage systems in which co-wives can contribute substantially to the family's labor productivity. These, along with erosion of regulations on postpartum sex and birth spacing which were prevalent prior to modernization, are identified as characterstics which have and will continue to resist fertility decline.

This study examines the theory that transvestism is a way for boys to escape the male role. Munroe and Munroe use male contribution to subsistence as a new measure of a "rigorous male role." Findings suggest an association between male predominance in subsistence and presence of transvestism.

This study attempts to replicate earlier findings regarding transvestism using a larger sample and a different index of sex distinctions. It is asserted that societies that maximize sex distinctions will not have institutionalized male transvestism.

This article discusses two different explanations of male initiation ceremonies. Evidence is also presented that suggests that psychological conflict might strongly predict male initiation in the presence of the following catalysts: nonmatrilocal residence, nonstate political organization, and warfare.

Using a sample of four language families, this paper replicates previous findings on the relationship between consonant-vowel syllable use and climate. An secondary finding on the relationship between consonant-vowel syllable use and writing system was also replicated.

The author explicitly defines and provides code for male and female age organizations and secret societies in Africa, as well as their significant sociopolitical roles within society. The author conducts preliminary analysis using the codes to explore characteristics and regional patterns of such organizations and societies. The analysis is compared to existing studies in order to assess the code and better understand cross-cultural patterns and variances. The author identifies the usefulness of the code beyond Africa, and discusses avenues for future research. No explicit hypotheses were tested, but Ericksen includes some descriptive generalizations.

This article suggests that Wilson's definition of sociobiology, which incorporates underlying principles of animal social behavior, can be applied to human bahvior. Specifically, Wilson's assertion that the major ecological conditions associated with monogamy in animal societies, is tested on human societies.

This study attempts to reconstruct ancestral marriage practices using hunter-gathers' phylogenies based on mitochondrial DNA sequences. Data suggest that arranged marriages and brideprice/bridewealth likely go back at least to the first modern human migrations out of Africa and that early ancestral human societies probably had low levels of polygyny.